Hi, I am new to the board.
I downloaded the old client (with the old renderer) and had massive problems with fps.
Now I am back, eager to help you make a great game for roleplayers.
Now my idea on the thieving part:
The game wont support open thieving, open PKing and so on. I got that so far
First thing to do is to ask yourself what the nature of a thief is. There might me thieves who steal out of necessity (poor guy thats living on the street), others steal because they wanna hit the rich (robin hood type), we got thieves that only steal cause they dont want to work decently and think its easier to steal, and then again we got another type that is lost deep in cleptomania.
So what do they have in common?
The tief needs to be able to
a) Steal from other players / NPCs
b) Be able to survive while constantly breaking the law
The people living in the towns and the adventures need the ability to defend themselves.
So they need
a) To rely on the established authorities to fight thieving
b) Be able to defend against thieving attempts
For a computer roleplay game, in order to simulate the thief role, those things are essential, else its not a thief but something else. Call it whatever you want, if its not working like that its not a thief and its not going to satisfy those players who love to be a thief and who love to plan every single step hours before.
In a game, you, being the thief, just walk up to a person, and use a skill and run away with the goodies/money.
In reality, a warrior would never let a suspious person aproach so close. Also there are always alot of people watching the scene which makes stealing a tough job - in a game this isnt simulated, if there is one guy around or if there are 10 guys around, it doesnt matter.
So my proposal is as followed:Thieves gets a special indicator, something like \"thieves drive\", indicating its appetite/motiavtion to steal.
This indicator cannot be affected by the player itself.
If the indicator is high (lets say it ranges from -100 to +100), at +100, the thief is fully satisfied and doesnt feel the need to pickpocket. While the indicator is above 0, the player playing the thief just cannot use any pick pockets ability. When time passes, the indicator slowly decreases, and finally giving the thief the possibility to steal. If the indicator reaches -10 or lower, the thief gets his stats decreased and the longer he/she waits the more his stats weaken. The thief needs to make a successful pick pocket attempt to get his indicatorpoints back up, and to remove his skilldecrease.
The skills decreasing shouldnt be related to the pickpocketing ability, but to everything else. This simulates that the player doesnt really control when his guy needs to go for a coup. Modifiers for the indicator need be thought out, of course that could use some fine tuning.
The thieving attempt:The player needs to get close up to another player.
As soon as he activates the thieving attempt he cannot move and a progress bar appears. The progress is modified by the amount of people standing near the 2 players. This could be done by a sphere around the thief, counting the total players and NPCs. If there are 1-2 ppl in the sphere, the progress bar moves quick, and the more ppl there are, the less fast the progress bar moves. When the amount of players reaches a certain peak (lets say 12 ppl) the progress bar starts to move quickly again, simulating that the thief uses the scramble to hide his intentions.
If the victim moves away while the progress bar is not completed, the victim automatically shouts:
\"%name_of_thief is a thief! Stop him!\" NPC Guards being near immediatelly hunt the thief.If he succeeds, he will get money, and only money, from the player / NPC. The action increases his thiving indicator, and thus makes it impossible for the thief to rob the next person. His \"demand\" is satisfied.
It doesnt matter if the thiev fails or succeeds. A thieving attempt always flagges the thief for PvP enabled for a certain amount of time.
With a system like this, there would be some social interaction but due to the timer griefing would not be a big issue. Also, the amount of money stolen should vary depending on the skill of the thief.
This also encourages people to store the money in the bank vault. If the player doesnt carry any money, the thief cannot steal it.
But the main reason for a system like this, is, that it sees thieving from a different perspective: Thieving is not just a thiefs advantage, at the same time its his disadvantage. Be it the need of money, be it the psychological aspect.
By showing the player that a thief also suffers from his lifestyle, only true thief-roleplayers will choose that role.
The only thing I am still looking into, is, how to prevent the thief stealing from a RL friend just to remove his stats penalty. Maybe limit the stealing process to town areas would solve it.
Anyway, any thoughts?
